The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1887-05-23
UNJUST TREATMENT.
Indian Traders Present Long List of
Grievances.

WASHINGTON May Ex-senator Platt,
Chairman of the Senate Select Committee,
directed to investigate certain allegations
with respect to the appointments of Indian
tradesmen, has returned from the West,
whittier the subcommittee went fortnight
ago to take testimony. The witnesses to be
examined had been subponaed to appear at
Arkansas City, town on the southern bor
der of Kansas, and they came for the most
part from the Indian Territory.
REMOVALS TOO SUMMARY.
The complaints of the traders, who were
Sharply and ably cross examined by Senator
Blackburn, are to the effect that they wore
summarily removed upon no substantial
pretext except that they were Republicans,
and that personal, and political friends of
the people now in high authority were given
their places. The statements of the
traders showed that they had an
average of $4,000 each invested
in their business. Much, sometimes
all OF their investment, was swept away by
these changes, and men in middle and in
old age, who had thought themselves pros
porous and well provided for, were reduced
at once to bankruptcy. The Indians receive
an annuity and lease money, and are
periodically in funds for few days at a
time; at all other seasons they are in debt to
the traders, who usually have one-half
or three-quarters of their investments out
standing.
OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND.
The Indians pay their debts promptly
enough to traders who remain in the bust
ness and who can continue to trust them
but one whose doors are closed, or who, as
in some cases, is peremptorily ordered away
from the Territory, has no chance of re-
covering more than small fraction of his
dues Whatever may be the verdict with
regard to the blame-worthiness of the ap-
pointing power, in respect to these things as
developed, Senator Platt thinks the commit
tee will be a unit in the opinion that the
power of arbitrary interference in the pure
ly business affairs of private citizens,
or making or breaking for
tunes of worthy men, calls loudly
for reform, and that whatever may be the
divergence of their views respecting the
civil service reform in general, the Indian
traderships ought not las evidence shows
they were not under former administrations
to be disposed of as the rewards of political
service. After completing the taking of
the testimony at Arkansas City, the com
mittee proceeded by wagon into the Indian
Territory.
BOUNTIFULLY PROVIDED FOR.
Almost directly south of Arkansas City
lies the Kaw reservation, consisting of more
than 120, 900 acres of as fine land as can be
found in the West, which is the sole prop
erty of a tribal remnant, numbering exactly
1877 individuals counting women and chill
dren. These people are worthless beggars,
upon whom the best efforts of philanthropy
are lavished in vain. The committee rode
twenty or twenty-five miles across this res
ervation without discovering a single sign of
inhabitancy, except the wire fences of the
cattle men and the bsildings at the agency.
MORE OF UNCLE SANS WARDS.
Coming into the Usage country they found
1 800, ,000 acres reserved for about 1,500 peo-
pie, two-thirds of which number are full
bloods, as uncultured and worthless as their
ancestors of century ago. These people
are, per capita, perhaps the wealthiest on
the globe. If their trust fund and their
lands were divided among them every man,
woman and child would possess fortune of
about $4,000
ARIsToCRATIC RED MEN.
A few of them have taken to farming,
but this development is not all that might
be gathered from the bare statement. They
toll not with their hands, but employ white
men to do it for them. Fastidious aristo-
Gratis are daily seen coming to the agency in
their gaudy blankets to purchase supplies.
For their own consumption they select the
most delicate viands, and will take nothing
else, but for their white laborers they buy
cheaper and coarser goods The committee
came back filled with the conviction that
our national Indian policy is not accom-
plishing all that was expected of it.
SPOILED BY KINDNESS.
In their contact with experienced men,
traders, agents and the employees they found
it to be the almost universal opinion that
to feed and cloth the savages and guard
them tenderly against all influences and ne
cessities which have served to civilize white
men is not calculated to make them good
citizens, in which opinion Senator Platt con-
fesses deposition to concur. The Indians
had, indeed, ceased to be dangerous as saw
ages, but only to become the most despicable
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